1. Field of the Invention
The invention concerns an apparatus for extracting the entrails and/or cleaning the belly cavities of decapitated fish, said apparatus comprising a conveyor for advancing the fish essentially transversely to their longitudinal axes and with their decapitation faces lying in a plane of decapitation essentially perpendicular to the conveying plane, and a suction device having a suction opening lying essentially in said decapitation plane.
2. Description of Prior Art
From U.S. Pat. No. 2,775,785 there is known a gutting apparatus, in which there is arranged a gutting device to which there is connected a suction device adjacent of a conveyor for transversely positioned fish and behind a circular knife for cutting off the heads of the fish. The suction aperture of the gutting device is connected to and separated from the suction device rhythmically according to the passage of the conveyor elements by a rotary slide or screen.
This gutting apparatus is an improved embodiment of known apparatus for producing nobbed sardines or herrings. In these generally known apparatus the entrails must be sucked out during the passage of the opened head end of the belly cavity in front of the suction device within a very short period. With respect to such known apparatus the gutting apparatus of U.S. Pat. No. 2,775,785 shows the advantage of the suction head being guided against the head end of the belly cavity of the fish and together with this over a smaller part of the conveying path of the fish. This enables the reduction of the necessary suction power. However, it is not possible to gut and remove the entrails reliably with this gutting apparatus, since the forces exertable upon the entrails by the low pressure do not suffice to detach the ligaments or other anchorages of the entrails within the belly cavity in a reliable manner, this disadvantage being particularly present in the event of rather tough or tenacious anchorages.